Weekdays: Mon-Fri; 8-5 pm

Closed Tues. afternoon: April through September

For After Hours Urgent Care only, the on-call physician will hold office hours on Saturday morning from 9 am to 12 noon. The location of After Hours Care will vary and is usually held in the office of the physician providing call coverage for that day.

Medlink Answering Service:  323-5465 or 323-LINK

General Appointment Policies:
In an effort to help us stay on time and minimize your waiting time, we have adopted the following office policies:
• Presenting late for any appointment by 10 minutes or more may necessitate in rescheduling your appointment. Call us if you’re running late. We can assess at that time whether or not you may need to reschedule.
• We discourage you from adding a sibling to our schedule at the time of check-in. We would request that if you would like more than one child to be seen that you inform us when you make your initial appointment. This allows us to book enough time to see multiple siblings of the same family and not increase waiting time for patients who follow your appointment.
• Walk-ins are also discouraged. Please call ahead. There is no guarantee that we can see your child immediately if you present without calling first. In fairness to other patients who have booked an appointment, and if you have no life-threatening emergency, you may be asked to reschedule for an available appointment slot later in the day.
• Emergency work-ins such as lacerations, broken bones, respiratory breathing difficulties are always assessed by the nurse and triaged accordingly.

P R A C T I C E   E M A I L

Once you are an established patient with our practice, you may choose to enroll in our “Practice Email”. Our Practice Email allows us to communicate with our patients for a variety of reasons. Below are just a few examples. As a note, our Practice Email is not designed to receive email messages from patients. It only allows us to “broadcast” to you.

•  Reminders to schedule physicals

•  Flu shot reminders

•  Insurance updates

•  Health alerts in the community

•  Seasonal health tips and reminders

•  Holiday office schedules

• Sick Visits, Immunizations, and Rechecks – We ask that you cancel these appointments as a courtesy to other patients that may need your appointment slot for their sick children.

We receive a multitude of calls for many different reasons. Incoming calls to our
office are answered by our receptionist.

• Appointments / Administrative: Our receptionist will be happy to assist in
scheduling any appointment you may need. She can also answer administrative questions regarding medical records, shot records, etc.

• Nurse / physician / medical / lab results: All calls with medical questions will be returned by the nurse. We try to minimize our call back time, but please remember,

that our nurse has additional responsibilities involving patient care occurring simultaneously in our office. Her primary responsibility is to handle patient care duties in the office while returning phone calls as soon as possible between those duties.

• We return ALL phone calls before the day’s end and are often still returning calls after our office phones close. Please be sure to leave a phone number at which you may be reached.

• Physician Calls: Calls needing to be returned by the physician will be completed at the end of the day or between appointments as time allows.

• Insurance and Billing: We staff a separate Business, Insurance and Billing Office. They are extremely knowledgeable and able to assist you with any insurance or billing questions you may have. You can reach them directly at 241-0546 or you may call our main line and be transferred.

So with that in mind, here’s how you can help us handle your request!
1. Don’t wait till the last minute. We need 48-72 hours to complete your form particularly in the peak seasons.
2. No form and we repeat…no form…."just needs a signature". It requires a review of the medical record and it requires review of the immunization record. It requires documentation. While it appears it may be just that simple to you, in reality it is not thus we are unable to fill out your form "while you wait".
3. We will be happy to mail your form back to you or call you when it is ready for pickup. We DO NOT fax any medical information to the parent, to the school, to the daycare, to anywhere!
4. You are welcome to fax us your blank form. We will have it ready for you to pick-up. Please provide us with a SASE (self-addressed, stamped envelope) should you desire to have your form returned by mail.
5. We do NOT have a standard physical form! Every school district, every daycare, every camp, every preschool should have their own form. Unfortunately, nothing is standard. We have to read and respond differently to every form.

Guidelines:
1. If no specific time period is mentioned and your child is older than 5 years of age, then we will fill out the form as long as your child has had a physical within 24 months from the date we are filling out the form.
2. If your form requires a physical within 12 months, then there are no exceptions to the rule.
3. Remember older children are often seen in our office for sick visits. Sick visits are not full physical exams and will not qualify to have your form filled out. We promote healthy lifestyles and routine physicals are a part of that healthy lifestyle attitude!

New medical privacy rules do not allow us to fax health forms, shot records, permission to treat forms, etc. Your child’s medical information is confidential.